Old School Excel

 Do you ever get asked to author reports at work? Are you the office nerd that happens to know a little (or a lot) about software and the intertubes?

That’s me. People email and call me for Excel tips. I’ve linked the Bill Jelen book to them, but they never buy it. They just keep calling and/or emailing me. No worries, I’m actually flattered to be asked for help. I’m self taught for the most part. 

Is Excel considered old school nowadays? I still use it every day and although it does have its weaknesses, it is very versatile and very powerful. Boring? Oh yeah, it can be very boring. An integrated MP3 player would be cool. Usually Excel’s shortcomings are human related. Whenever one creates several raw data reports from a SQL database or some proprietary title, and then manually inputs that data into Excel for manipulation and calculation goodness, mistakes occur. Every time. 

Still, for the small organization or company that doesn’t want to foot the bill for crystal reports or the like, Excel can be utilized to create some great looking reports. I prefer to convert my final reports into a .pdf and host them on a server. Then I can be sure that no one tries to “dink” with the data or my formulas and the original document is archived for later retrieval. 

My latest project is almost done and although I can’t post full size legible screen shots due to the super secret nature of the data, it’s easy to see the improvement. 

Plain old rows and columns are converted to beautiful technicolor presentations with GREEN = GOOD and RED = NOT SO GOOD indicators. 

Do you think I will get a bonus? Me either.  

True Story

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